Repair
Pool skimmer replacement in Houston
Cracked or leaking skimmers cut out and replaced at the waterline.
Chapter 01
How a skimmer cracks and leaks
The skimmer is the box set into the pool wall at the waterline, and it takes a beating. It is cast into the concrete on one side and joined to the deck on the other, so when Houston clay swells in a wet spring and shrinks in a dry August, the deck moves against it. Over the years that movement cracks the body, splits the throat or opens the joint around the collar.
A leaking skimmer does not announce itself. The water level drops a little each day, but only down to the level of the crack, and then it seems to stop. Sometimes the pump starts pulling air. Sometimes the deck beside the skimmer settles or stays damp. Those are the signs worth taking seriously, because water leaving through a skimmer wall can wash soil out from under the deck.
Spa spilling over a boulder edge into the pool
Replacing a skimmer the right way
Replacement starts with proof. Before anything gets cut, we test to confirm the skimmer is the leak, since a hairline in a pipe elsewhere looks the same from the surface. There is no point opening a deck for a skimmer that is not the problem.
Then the work is deliberate. The deck around the skimmer is cut back, the old body is chipped out of the shell and the plumbing is reconnected to a new unit set at the correct height against the waterline tile. The throat is sealed with a flexible joint that can move with the ground, not rigid mortar that cracks the same way again. The deck is patched and the waterline tile is matched back in.
You get a written explanation of what failed, what we replaced and how it was sealed. If the deck or the tile needs more than a patch, we tell you before we start.
Chapter 03
After the new skimmer is in
The water level should sit about halfway up the skimmer opening. Too low and the pump pulls air. Too high and the skimmer stops skimming. Check the weir flap and the basket now and then, and keep an eye on the joint around the collar for hairline gaps.
If the level starts dropping again, or the deck near the skimmer looks wet or sunk, call Sutton Pools at (281) 789-4584. We repair pools across Houston and about fifty miles around, and the quote is free. We would rather tell you straight that it needs another look than let a small leak become a deck repair.
Sutton Pools. Call (281) 789-4584.